Wild Food, Prices, Diets and Development: Sustainability and Food Security in Urban Cameroon

Abstract

This article analyses wild food consumption in urban areas of Cameroon. Building upon findings from Cameroon's Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) this case study presents empirical data collected from 371 household and market surveys in Cameroonian cities. It employs the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food's framework for understanding challenges related to the availability, accessibility, and adequacy of food. The survey data suggest that many wild/traditional foods are physically available in Cameroonian cities most of the time, including fruits, vegetables, spices, and insects. Cameroonians spend considerable sums of their food budget on wild foods. However, low wages and the high cost of city living constrain the social and economic access most people have to these foods. The data also suggest that imports of non-traditional staple foods, such as low cost rice, have increasingly priced potentially more nutritious or safe traditional local foods out of markets after the 2008 food price crisis. As a result, diets are changing in Cameroon as the resource-constrained population continues to resort to the coping strategy of eating cheaper imported foods such as refined rice or to eating less frequently. Cameroon's nutrition transition continues to be driven by need and not necessarily by the preferences of Cameroonian consumers. The implications of this reality for sustainability are troubling.

Contribution of forest foods to dietary intake and their association with household food insecurity: a cross-sectional study in women from rural Cameroon

“…However, these interventions are provided to relatively few accessible, rural forestdependent communities (24) . Complementing the existing interventions with food-based strategies such as nutrition education coupled with the promotion of sustainable utilization of forest foods can be a feasible strategy to address undernutrition (25) .…”

Food politics: perspectives on food security in Central Africa

“…Businesses, with a few exceptions, talk mainly about their interventions with respect to health, and do not touch upon nutrition. Interestingly, the popular opinion evident at local food markets that traditional, wild and forest foods make strong contributions to adequate diets, for example as evidenced in Sneyd's (2013b) study in urban Cameroon is lacking from all but a handful of disempowered civil society sources on this topic.…”

“…Within the six countries that constitute the Communauté économique et monétaire de l'Afrique centrale (CEMAC) and share the same CFA franc (Coopération financière en Afrique centrale) currency, a diverse array of food security challenges persist as economic and policy factors increasingly bind the food systems of each member economy together (UNECA 2013). For instance, the value and volume of food moving across national frontiers has continued to grow as barriers to the intra-regional food trade have fallen (Sneyd 2013b). Transnational interest in food production, sales, distribution and finance in CEMAC has similarly been on the rise (Sneyd 2012a;AfDB, OECD Development Centre, and UNECA 2013;Sneyd and Sneyd 2014b).…”

Cameroon: Perspectives on Food Security and the Emerging Power Footprint

“…Local plates containing wild foods, such as eru, ndole, and mbongo chobi have become "national dishes". In 2012, when researchers asked over 350 market women and food buyers in Buea and in Yaoundé to name their favourite plates regardless of cost, the nearly universal response was to mention an identifiable national dish or a local delicacy containing foods "from the forest" [51]. However, households that would typically prefer to eat these foods on a regular basis are now finding it more difficult to consistently purchase ingredients for these plates.…”

“…Transformist and sovereigntist voices in civil society and in multilateral organizations, for example, have sought to countervail or counteract what they perceive to be the government's relative lack of attention to challenges linked to adequacy. Similarly worthy of future study is the related topic of how powerful actors have been able to keep availability and accessibility issues at the top of the policy agenda given Cameroon's nutrition transition and the reality that the access many Cameroonians enjoy to nutritious forest products is declining [51].…”